The Thrill of It All

by Joseph O'Connor

  Dad’s telling me this. And I’m slightly perplexed. This is bothering you, why? I’m, ‘Hello?’

  And he’s, ‘What do you mean, hello? What’s that supposed to even mean?’

  I’m like, Dad, what’s the problem? Try to see it as something nice, he’s giving you back your guitar. Tune it up, give it a clean, play it tonight at Trez’s gig. Because a guitar like that was meant to be played. You don’t like to think of it in a glass case.

  And we’re out of the blocks. Fran this and Fran that. It’s ‘charity’ or ‘largesse’ and every other insane shit you ever heard. I’m telling him, quit reading everything the worst possible way but it’s oil on the dadfires. Insanity.

  Because I love my dad, you know, he’s a deeply admirable guy. But he’s a typical, oversensitive, slight-seeing klutz of an over-imaginative Irishman. Want to know why they were fighting all those 800 years in Ireland? Robert Goulding, that’s why. It’s a verb. ‘Goulding’ means remembering too damn long and not getting over yourself. Mom told me after he and Fran had the fall-out, you literally couldn’t mention Fran’s name. Turning off the radio. Wouldn’t go into a record store for years. All I can say myself, there’s usually two sides. When their marriage broke up, Fran was good to Mom and me. Bank drafts arriving. Always anonymous, but you knew. He paid my school fees for years. Christ, he paid off our mortgage. You couldn’t say it to Dad. But it happened.

  Sure, Fran did some bad stuff, there’s no doubt in my mind, it’s just that I don’t believe in the demonising thing. The guy had no parents. Look at his childhood. You think someone like that isn’t broken? Little kid with no mother, beaten, abused – you’d like him to be perfect? How perfect are you? Easy for me to say; I wasn’t the one he hurt. But he tried to help Mom and me in a really bad time. That’s not everything. But it’s something. Right?

  I’m, Dad, take it easy. You’ve a show in three hours. So the guy gives you a guitar, so what’s the big deal? And I’ll always remember what he said, the Goulding Irish bastard.

  ‘The killer just sent me my coffin.’

  Well, then I see red. I’m, hold up a second. I’m back the fuck up with your shit. I just flew halfway across the world to see a show I don’t even want to see and you’re dumping your issues like a spoilt little brat, so spare me the hurt prom-queen act. You’re not the babes in the wood, Dad. Some of this is your fault. Did you ever pick up the phone? Ever once make a move? And that didn’t help. Didn’t help at all. Okay, it’s a little disrespectful to call your father a self-deluding, disingenuous prick, but as they teach you in pre-Law at Princeton University, truth is a perfect defence. So, by now I’m yelling down the phone and he’s hollering back and he’s ‘you never understand’ and I’m ‘fucking SURE I don’t’. I said Dad, you got your excuse. You wanted to wreck Trez’s show. Well done. Only you. Congratulations. The Customs guys are staring. There’s a nun in the line. Well, Sister heard some new vocabulary that day in Dublin. My family, we put the fun into dysfunctional. I let him have it. Both barrels. And he blasted me back. Like Fran is my fault. Or Seán’s or Trez’s or my mother’s. And he’s ‘Why are you late anyways? When you know this meant everything to me.’

  I said Dad, you know what this is about? You wish he was here.

  And I switched off my phone, walking through Arrivals at Dublin Airport. I was shaking with rage. Jimmy was waiting.

  ‘I know,’ he kept saying. ‘I know, love. You’re right.’ I cried a bucket of tears and Jimmy just held me.

  Impossible man, Robert Goulding.

  Hey Sombrero.

  It’s myself. Been a funny old time. Put your eyes back in your head. Tear this up if you want. Well, don’t for a minute. Still reading?

  Sorry about the lawyer, day you came to the house. When I heard about the gig, I panicked, dunno why. Wish you well with it. Forgive me? Messed up. Knew you wouldn’t cash the cheque. Dunno what I was thinking. Very, very sorry and ashamed.

  What a beautiful guitar. I’m sending her back. I tried my best to woo her but she wouldn’t be won. Tried reggae, the blues, and the twelve-bar boogie. Disco, Frisco, the pluck and the plectrum. She plays only one song: My Robbie.

  I don’t know what she sees in you, honestly I don’t. It must be the red of your eyes.

  Her second pick-up is loose. I gave her proper strings. Don’t you know how to treat an eminent lady, you Lutonian flunt? I wouldn’t string up Satan’s dog with those useless yokes you had on her. Better off with barbed wire. You great booby.

  I’m writing this in Vietnam. We’ve a house here now. It’s fantastic because no one gives a cuss for who I am, i.e. nobody. They think I’m a returned Yank, or a weirdly silent local, which suits me right down to the slingbacks. I’m building a technical college, which is what they need most. I’d love you to see it. Dead proud. All my team, they’re all locals – all born over here. The way we’ve set it up, I’m kept in the background. No ‘Fran Mulvey’ shite. No press. These kids over here, they’re smart but they’ve nothing. Give them books and a teacher, they work all night. The only thing I said – don’t give ’em a bar. Memories of the Trap! What a ratpit.

  I saw you a few years ago in London with this beautiful girl. I was over there working, took a walk in Hyde Park. Synapses burning. Fried out. There you were – across the lake – with this vision out of Hardy. Took a moment to realise she must have been Molly. She’s beautiful, Rob. You must be so proud. Wanted to go over. Should have.

  I hear she’s into music. That right? What a coolness. My own aren’t into making it, which is fine, but they love it. Way I see things now, that’s the main and only quest. A kid who really loves it, you’re giving them a gift. What’s making it? Nothing. We’re sheet music, nothing more. It’s the listener gonna sing you the song.

  Hey Rob, I’ve a sister. Took seven years to find her. She’s married and lives in Hanoi with her husband. They have four gorgeous children, my nieces and nephews. Can you imagine such a thing as Uncle Francis. I never knew she existed until I started coming here in ’98. They told me at the orphanage. Now, that was some day. Don’t think I’ll ever forget the morning I knocked on her door. She’s a beautiful looking person, fragile, really serious, but speaks no English at all, and my Vietnamese is shockin mowldy, though I’m taking lessons now. Her name is Ho Xuan Nguyễn, not easy for a Paddy like me to say. Someone told me brothers and sisters in Vietnam share the same middle name, so I’d like you to address me as Xuan. Pretty cool, right? You know what a blessing it is to have something as wonderful as a sister. How terrible that must have been, for you to lose her, so young. How brave you were, Rob. And how stupid, the rest of us. When I think of how we never talked to you, or listened, or felt. Maybe music was your way of getting it out. You never knew there was no band without you, that you were the glue. At least I don’t think so? Maybe you did. But the Ships was Robert Goulding and three of his admirers, and bugger all else, that’s truth. Other songs might have been written. But not the ones got writ. If you ever hear ‘Devil it Down’ on the radio, remember this, hey? That’s your song, compadre. No flunt else’s. There’s people who drive the train but they didn’t build the tracks. No Robbie Goulding, no nada.

  That time in ’94 – I was so sorry to hear of your mum’s passing, Rob. What a lovely lady she was. So mild and forgiving. It was a fucked-up year, I was back on the junk. Spent four months in rehab. No one knows. Didn’t know whether to get in touch with you or not. Many times had the phone in hand. Suppose I was afraid. All I want to say – being a tiny part of your home’s the only reason I’m alive. Should have told you back then. Never could. I’m talking literally. Plan around the months I met you was goodbye, simple truth. Jump off the bridge outside Luton station. Went there one night to do it, drugged up to the gills, pissed on cheap cider. Train roaring from London. That’s a sound I remember. But you, and Rutherford Road, and Jimmy and Alice. Where would you find them? Tell Jimmy I said hello. I can hear him right now. (‘Fukken daisy!’) You saved a
boy’s life, Rob. That’s more than most achieve. It’s not everything. But it mightn’t be nothing.

  The littluns are well, and no longer little. Amelia’s starting college. Wants to be a dentist. (A wha’?) She’s inconveniently beautiful, so the brutish boys are all about her like wasps in a jam jar, little filthy snotty oily overconfident toadlike leering sods. Andrew’s in Glasgow. He’s studying theatre. Fantastic kid, spiky, dead smart. I’ve loved being a dad, way more than you’d think, mainly because the opportunities it presents for fascistic behaviour are so easily disguised as wisdom, don’t you find?

  James is named after you. I always preferred your first name, don’t know why. ‘Rob’ sounds wrong. I don’t think you’re a Rob. (Maybe you’re a Xuan? Just a thought.) He goes to Coláiste Eoin near Belfield, finishes next year. It’s a bit of a journey but he loves it. You know what they’re like at that age. Everything is mates.

  They love him over here in Vietnam, he’s so good with them, very gentle. You should hear him speak the language, he’s fantastic. Honest, he speaks it way better than me. Funny when a kid from Howth is translating Vietnamese for his Vietnam-born old dad. He takes me to the football whenever Ireland are playing and I pretend to enjoy it but I don’t. Have you and Seán acquired sense enough in your dotage to go off it? Twenty-two pampered ninnies chasing a bladder around a field and clutching their genitals and snotting. If normal people did it they’d be sectioned in an asylum. Honestly, you’d want to give them a spittoon. There’s more refinement in a dunghill or a Michael Bublé album. Well, maybe not more. But it’s close. James says I need to grow up and get over myself. He has a signed poster on his wall of Lê Công Vinh and Nguyên Minh Phu’o’ng, who won us (Vietnam) the Suzuki Cup in ’08 and who invest the wretched ‘sport’ with some chivalry. We beat Thailand 3–2 on aggregate, a word James had to explain. It was the politest night of soccer you ever saw.

  Every time I say ‘James’, I think of you, Spatchcock. Well, not every time. Must be honest. I tell him he’s named for the best mate a frightened kid ever had, the most gentle, sweetheart, generous boy, who I didn’t deserve, because nobody ever could, that it was an honour to know him, that I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t. I say he taught me guitar, gave me courage, lined it up. Told me I wasn’t a piece of worthless, expendable shit, though not in so many words, because we didn’t do words, right? We spoke in three chords. But hey, that’s not hiding. It’s a gain in translation. I say he taught me B-7th, A-major, to E. Which is pretty much the only logic ever made sense at the time, or before, or since, or ever. Taught me C-sharp minor has four sharps in the signature. Taught me Sam Cooke’s ‘You Send Me’ is all you need to know, better than the Sistine Chapel or Newton’s Laws of Physics, or Darwin, or the Great Wall of China. Einstein? Get ballsed. Gimme Sly and the Family Stone. And you know what James says? So, where is he?

  I’m sorry, my Rob. For every hurt and hassle. Truly very sorry. For everything. If some time you felt like a walk on Howth’s photogenic cliffs or a mug of dacent tay – we wouldn’t have to unbosom, just maybe listen to an album or something? – well, think it over, hey? I know you don’t want to.

  I used to love being able to speak with you every day. With Seán and Trez, too, but especially my Rob. It’s the only reason I wanted to be in the group. I liked you more than was wise. From the very first we met. Is it okay to tell you? Well, maybe you knew. I’d be so jealous of Trez – but then I saw she loved you. Not in any silly passing way, like wanting to be your girlfriend. That she cared. That she saw you were real.

  BAD persons send me their bad albums and their VERY bad demos. You and I could assemble a bonfire in silent, menacing seriousness? I have discovered that a Coldplay CD, when attacked with a lighter, burns with a surprisingly beautiful and soothing sort of yellow-gold flame, the colour of a teddy boy’s lapels. But the funny thing is, when you blow on it to extinguish the fire, from the resulting puff of smoke appears Bono! And he grants you a wish. This is fact, swear to God. Try it. I wished for world peace.

  He’s actually a good guy. Though you’d want to give him a dig sometimes. I’m working with the Tiger Lillies. Know their stuff? They’re outstanding. Three-piece from England, singer sings falsetto, gorgeously gentle drumming, just a presence, nothing more, an old double bass, all acoustic. Got a beautiful song called ‘Flying Robert’ about a little boy gets lost in a storm. Everyone told him stay indoors but he thought the rain was lovely. Didn’t want to be safe. Out he went. And the wind blew him away, till he couldn’t find his home. Look it up on YouTube. It’s a slayer, dead simple. I’d trade everything I ever wrote to have written that song. Just D, A and G. You’d love it.

  Tell Seán to lay off the pies. He looks like a secretly bisexual Michelin Man forced to marry a librarian. Honestly, what’s he hiding under all that tum-tum? His talent, I suppose. As usual.

  You know I don’t mean it. Tell him I love him, always will. Stoutheart. He’s one in a million. Did you know they gave him an honorary degree at UCLA last year, for the work he’s been doing with kids in prison? I bet he didn’t tell you. Saw it in the papers over there. I’ve not spoken with him in years. It’s fantastic he’s happy. I got thinking the other night – he’s the only one of the Ships was always in the band. We never did one gig without Seán. Funny, when he was only the temporary drummer. I heard he’s a granddad. Imagine.

  Much love to Trez. Isn’t she gorgeous – sweet God. She’s one of those women grow lovelier every decade. Imagine her at eighty. She’ll still be the nazz. Thank Christ you two didn’t marry. She loved you too much. But all of us did. You daft tit.

  Tear ’em up, homeboy. Are you going to sing tonight? Find I can’t sing those old songs of ours any more, they make me too sad. Put me back in the past. Admire you for being able to try.

  Phi thu’o’ng, bất phu, as we say over here. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I think that means.

  Oh, and stop that wicked smoking. Do you hear? CUT IT OUT.

  What else? Don’t want to go. I’m sorry, Rob. Truly.

  Right I’m off.

  Your glimmertwin bud.

  X

  Do you know what I’d love, above anything else? If some time – whenever – you’d come to Vietnam. There’s peace here, Rob. You wouldn’t think so. But there is. It’s the most extraordinary place, you need to see the skies here. I wish you could see from my window right now, the red on the water and the fishermen coming in. And the people, even the kids, they’ve survived so much. They’ve courage. Generosity. It lifts you.

  You and Molly might come, and Michelle if she’d like? I never met Michelle. But I know she must be lovely. Some time. Okay? Don’t have to be now. In a while. Next year. I’d love if you’d come. All of us together. It’s great we’re still alive. We shouldn’t be, y’know. But we are.

  I know so many went away, far too early, too young. So do you, Flying Robert. So do you.

  SEÁN

  So it’s coming on for six and we’re onstage doing the sound-check, Trez and yours truly. No sign of Noddy. Ain’t in his dressing room. Someone says he’s ‘nipped out for a walk’. Trez and me do the lot, drums, guitars, vocals. And that’s a thing you want to get right. See, every band has its own way of handling a sound-check. Some of the young ones won’t do it all, just a mic-test, keep it simple, get partying. But I’m old school. You want to do a sound-check. It’s brushing your teeth before a date.

  Sound’s just a part of it. Big part, sure. But the other reason you do a sound-check is to get au fait with the stage. The singer needs to know how many steps to the mic, where’s the sightlines, the flats, the monitors, the pit. How many steps to my riser? Where’s Trezzie’s water, her seat for the keyboards? You do a sound-check for fifteen hundred reasons. Where’s the spotlight falling? You need the information. Too late when the gig starts if you ain’t done your prep. Never in a million years would you face a gig like that with no sound-check. Own the gig. Or the gig owns you. Very dim idea, no sound-check
.

  I tell you this so you’ll understand how we’re feeling that evening. Ninety minutes to kick-off. We’re running badly late. Guitarist gone AWOL. Probably pissed in some gin-shop. All day long, there’s been every little screw-up you can imagine. Equipment gone missing. Pedalboard’s wrong. Amps buzzing, you name it. This geezer, the Prof, who they’ve give us as sound-hog, he’s turned out a diamond, professional, on the money, but he’s had to work his nads off all day. Geldof’s arrived backstage. Ready to go. I look at me watch. Five minutes to six. Doors open at half past. Time’s badly short. And bang. The lights go out.

  Power cut. All over the city. Then the generators fail. Most up-to-date club venue in the country, right up there with anyplace in Europe. The generators never failed, never once, couldn’t happen. But it happened that day. Five to six. Like, you wouldn’t want to be superstitious, you know what I’m saying? Bad fairies about. Bad scene.

  The Prof’s gone mental. Howling at the sparkies. Fix that effing rig you bucket of tosspots. Don’t gimme no excuses, juice my rig else I’ll cut you. The language is fairly non-Shakespearean, being honest. We’ve gone up to the greenroom, Trezzie and me. And there’s Rob by the window. Smoking a sodding fag.

  He don’t look too happy. Ain’t whistling a tune. But at least he’s sodding here. It’s a start.

  Well, I don’t say nothing. This is over to Trez. Noddy in one of his moods, that’s well above my pay-grade. Also, there’s a part of you don’t give a shit. Tell the truth, I wasn’t tremendously in love with him right then. I don’t have the time, mate. Sorry to disappoint. But whole minutes actually pass when I’m not thinking about you.

  She goes over and tells him she wants his help with a song. So they start working on a number, an old thing they never got right, from back in the New York days. Still faffing about with it all this time later. And I guess I didn’t mind, because he needed the distraction. I recorded them on me phone. The two of them together. Nice. Like the Everlys. Beautiful harmonies. Aeolian. I ain’t crazy about the song but they done it nice, have to say. Want to hear it? Got it here. Just a tic.